Archive for category Hardware Technology

According to a Wall Street Journal Article this morning (March 18th 2009). The International Business Machine (IBM) are in talks to buy Sun. IBM is offering 6.5 billion according to the WSJ for the deal which is one of the largest bids by IBM for a rival. If this goes through this would put IBM in competition with the likes of HP and Cisco in the server markes and Oracle in the database space. IBM is a heavy backer of the Java platform which Sun owns; what does this mean for the other applications in Sun’s cart, including MySQL and OpenOffice applications. In this weak economy its not uncommon to see these consolidations. What impact will this have in the Open source space if two OSS giants become one?

In Wired’s latest magazine, there was an article on open source hardware: “Build It. Share It. Profit. Can Open Source Hardware Work?”. Massimo Banzi, co-founder of the Arduino project, posts all of the design files, schematics, and even software online, so that anyone can build their own Arduino board. It is a chipmaking robot, and 50,000 Arduino boards have been sold in the past two years. Arduino controls the brand, and this is part of the reason that they still sell any boards at all: anyone can make one, but only certain companies are allowed to use “Arduino” on their product, and they in return do have to pay a small fee. Surprisingly, this has actually helped Arduino. When other manufacturers make low-quality boards, with flimsy wiring and soldering, word gets around and Arduino sales increase.

As always, the question of money comes up. Software doesn’t cost much to make, but hardware? Arduino, like many others, sells their expertise. The boards cost $35, and Arduino makes very little off that–a few dollars, maybe. “But the serious income comes from clients who want to build devices based on the board and who hire the founders as consultants.” As far as the entire company is concerned, working for firms who want Arduino products can be relatively easy: “For example, one client wanted to control LED arrays. Poking around online, Banzi found that someone in France had already published Arduino code that did the job. Banzi took the code and was done.”
Wired really covered a lot with open source this month; online the article is 6 pages long. It has a lot of neat ideas and is really worth a read for all. Alert to bigtime hardware manufacturers: you may have to change your business style.
View article here.